By Vernon Robison

Moapa Valley Progress

How does a parent solve the problem of a bright son or daughter who just can’t seem to learn? Over a decade ago, Logandale resident and long-time public school educator, Kaelyne Pendleton was struggling with exactly that question.

Her daughter Kirby, then in the eighth grade, was just not progressing in school. The concepts and ideas being taught in class were just not clicking. Kirby couldn’t remember things one day that she had studied extensively the day before. She was having trouble with reading, too. In the middle of her eighth grade year, she was reading at only a third grade level.

Kaelyne said she was at her wits end with what to do. “I tried everything,” she said. “We worked on all kinds of phonics programs, learning resources, Sylvan Learning centers. These were all good programs, but they weren’t working for her.”

Then she happened upon a new program developed by a company named Learning Technics based in Draper, Utah. The company offered a six month program which claimed to have success in opening neurological pathways for students to be able to learn how to learn. Pendleton said that it was different from anything that she had come across. So she had her daughter give it a try.

Within six months, the program had made a remarkable difference.

“By the end of that school year, Kirby was reading at an 11th grade level,” Pendelton said. “From there on she was an A/B level student. It was an amazing difference!”

Kirby graduated high school in 2004. She has since graduated from cosmetology school and is completing a program to become certified as a cosmetology instructor.

The success of this experience made an impression on Pendleton. She has since used elements of the program in her work as a teacher, she said.

Earlier this summer Pendleton received formal training from Learning Technics and became a certified instructor in the program. Since July she has been working with local children in making the program available to here in Moapa Valley.

Learning Technics is an education research company established by John Heath. In an interview from a recent edition of PBS’s American Health Journal devoted to the program, Heath said that he had suffered from learning disabilities as a child and had struggled to adapt. But when his own son showed similar problems he started looking into ways to solve these issues.

He observed a pattern of many bright kids out there who seemed to be developed normally in every way. Looking at them on the surface you’d never know there was a problem, he said. But they had trouble with memory, reading, spelling and generally processing what they had been taught.

According to Heath, he worked with neurological surgeons and other medical specialist to learn how the brain processes information. In doing so, he developed a system of exercises and activities that he believes will develop pathways in the brain and clear the way for processing of information.

The exercises work on developing ten specific learning processes in the brain. They include are a battery of optical exercises that develop focus and smooth tracking of the eye. There are also memory exercises where students must recall details of pictures or sequences of letters as they appear on a wall chart. Students are often required to march in place and deal with intentional distractions from the trainer while doing these memory exercises. The course comes with hundreds of pages of these types of exercises.

“It is a wonderful program that helps kids to re-form neural pathways that might have never fully developed yet,” said Logandale resident, Pamela Bundy who is working as an assistant to Pendleton in the local project.

The program is not cheap. Working with directly with Pendleton and Bundy the program costs $3500 for the six month course. This includes a weekly hour-long session with Pendleton and all of the materials, booklets and equipment for the program. Pendleton offers no interest payment plans to make the program more affordable to local families.

Over the last two months, Pendleton has been working with five families who have decided to give the program a try.

Twelve-year-old Holly Hilton of Logandale has been working with Pendleton for about seven weeks. Her mother, Nalene Hilton, says that Holly is making great strides in the program.

“They have her setting specific goals each week and she is eager to work all throughout the week to achieve them,” said Nalene.

Nalene has noticed small differences in the increased clarity of Holly’s speech patterns. Also as her visual focus and tracking has improved with exercise, Holly’s reading skills have begun to come a lot easier to her, Nalene said.

“It is like the ditch is getting cleaned out and the water is allowed to flow through again,” Nalene said. “Of course, we are just beginning the six month journey. I’m interested and excited to see what is going to happen for her.”

Overton resident Jacqulyn Pray also started her 10 year-old daughter, Victoria, on the program back in July. For much of Victoria’s younger life she was quite unhealthy because of a serious heart condition. Jacqulyn believes that this may be the reason that Victoria’s neural pathways were not fully developed.

“Learning has been a struggle for her,” said Jacqulyn. “And its funny, if you talk to her you’d think that she is just like any other kid. She’s bright and smart. You’d never think that she has trouble reading.”

When Victoria came to Pendleton for an opening evaluation, it was an eye opening experience, said Jacqulyn. One of the tests had Victoria tracking her eyes back and forth from one focus point to another as quickly as possible for ten seconds. The program states that most children her age should be able to do 18-19 smooth sweeps of focus between points in that time. Victoria could only do three.

Pendleton said that this lack of tracking ability is the cause of a lot of reading problems in kids.

“They did these tests and told us precisely where her trouble was,” Pray said. “It explained things that we’d been wondering about for a long time. It was like: Now I understand what has been going on all these years!”

Victoria is also in the early stages of the program. But Jacqulyn said that she has seen gradual progress in working through the exercises.

“I see this as a huge thing,” Jacqulyn said. “So often these kinds of problems are just chalked up as some kind of permanent disability that kids might have. But I think that this shows that it might just be a developmental problem that can be fixed.”

For more information on the program, Pendleton may be reached at 397-8428 or at www.learningtechnics.com.